


Negative Space

by ilovehowyouletmefall



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Death Fic, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-07
Updated: 2013-09-07
Packaged: 2017-12-25 21:29:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/957796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilovehowyouletmefall/pseuds/ilovehowyouletmefall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Here's the thing: Giles doesn't stop thinking about her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Negative Space

**Author's Note:**

> Someone asked me to write about scenarios where Giles thinks of Jenny after she died. And as a general rule, I have a strong dislike for fic about Jenny being dead. But I wrote this anyways.

Here’s the thing: Giles doesn’t stop thinking about her. 

She’s on his mind constantly in the months following her death. He actively tries to think of other things, just so he can function. There’s no shortage of distractions - monsters, vampires, the end of the world. But one truth keeps invading his thoughts:

Jenny was alive, and now she isn’t. 

When Buffy disappears after Acathla, Giles throws himself into tracking her down. He knows he won’t find her until she wants to be found, but he has to try. And he has to do something to keep from thinking about what happened when he was held captive, to keep from thinking about Jenny’s face at all. 

But when Buffy returns, Giles tries to get her to accept what happened. And he realizes that he must do the same for himself.

He stops fighting it. Jenny was alive. And now she isn’t. And he has to live with that. 

And he does. Constantly. 

The intrusiveness of that one truth fades, but never disappears. She’s at the edges of his consciousness, smiling wryly and flirting with his thoughts. One of the children will say something irredeemably silly, and he’ll think of what Jenny’s response would be. He’ll try to learn to make some use out of the library computer, and she’s there telling him, “I told you so.” He’ll wonder how she would have gotten on with Anya, whether she would’ve been proud of Willow, if she and Olivia might’ve been friends. He imagines what she would’ve said about his new car, what she’d have thought of the Magic Box, if she could have maintained her sanity in a houseful of Potentials. 

In the middle of the night, she comes to him, unbidden, and he replays memories, again and again. He’s given up wondering what might have happened if he’d acted or spoken differently. He’s let go of his regrets. Now he just remembers. 

When he moved away from Sunnydale, he thought he might think of her less, being removed from the school and that apartment, and California. Instead, he just wonders what she would have thought of England and his home there, whether she would have liked to call it home as well.

Once, for a few giddy weeks, he thought the two of them might have had a life together.

But the thing is, in a way, Giles does live with Jenny.


End file.
